This poem came to me this morning, as I was adding the watermark of my name to this photo. I wanted to use it in today's blog, to talk about creative play.**

But then there was a poem waiting to be written. A gift poem.

The lines just bubbled up (pun totally intended) and I wrote them down, using picasa, on the photo itself, as they came. I don't usually mess around with rhythm and rhyme much, but there it was, galloping through my head, as it were. A gift.

Of course, there was still editing to do, after. I added that lovely word, "roiling" in as a descriptor. I changed the end from "to be called home to me (to me)" - which I still like, but wasn't what this was about, not really. There's a difference between calling something and uniting with something.

(Caution: writing poetry will make you over-think the meaning of words.)

And the sound (rhythm, rhyme) was off in the first version, too. I'm not entirely sure what/why/how, but I can hear it, when I speak it out loud. (Since this is an entirely made up "form," my ear is what matters.) It's a galloping sort of rhythm, akin to a... WHOA, while I was looking up the form that it reminded me of, I realized it is written in form, although the line breaks are off.

(There were too many stresses in that last line, in the original version.)

This is a pretty loose version*** of an alliterative accentual verse poem (since only the first and third lines have the "required" alliteration - it's a four line poem, in the non-visual sense), but I'm completely blown away that I totally nailed the correct amount of stresses. Without realizing it was a formal poem that had a correct amount of stresses.

This is what comes of having training in formal verse and having so much practice writing (and having done so much reading of) formal verse as well, I suppose. This is what comes of practice. I loved this poem before I realized it was in formal verse, and I almost love it even more after realizing it has a formal form because I am so amazed by the recognition.

* The elipses in the text version of this poem are entirely incidental, I'm just trying to make the line placement duplicate the photo-poem, for those who might be unable to read the photo-poem.

** The original point of this post was going to be to tell you that this photo was taken using camera zoom fx, which I bought this weekend and have been having great fun playing around with. It gives me the ability to add intentional blur to my Galaxy Player photos. Those of you using the iPhone/ iPod touch can use the native camera to do that, as per this post by Viv McMaster. She inspired me to go hunting for a new app, so I am doubly grateful. Plus, I can use camera zoom fx to make multiple exposures, instead of only double exposures, like vignette.

*** This poem, if written in the "correct" format, would look like this:

I definitely prefer the photo-poem, since it mirrors the mirrored image in the self-portrait I took. It's good to know the "correct" way to do things, but it is just as good to play with form. At least, that is my view on art. And this is my poem, so my view point gets followed!